1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to a method, system and computer-usable medium for automating the identification of web form parameters for an authorization engine.
2. Description of the Related Art
Authorization, as it relates to information security, is generally defined as the function of specifying access rights to resources. More specifically, “to authorize” is to define an access policy to specify under what conditions, or within which parameters, access is authorized. The resulting access policy is then used to control access to a given resource. Accordingly, it has become common for access control in computer systems and networks to rely upon access policies to approve, or disapprove, access requests for resources.
One known approach to managing such authorizations is through the implementation of an authorization engine, such as the Tivoli® Security Policy Manager (TSPM), available from International Business Machines (IBM®) of Armonk, N.Y. Such authorization engines typically use parameters from a request as input to a policy decision point (PDP), which in turn references predetermined rules to decide whether a given request will be permitted or denied. However, these parameters first need to be available in some manner within a rule authoring interface. The process by which rule parameters are matched to request parameters is known as policy configuration. Currently, this process is non-automated and is performed manually.